Back in February we launched the Education Roadtrip, a survey of 6,400 Americans across 8 regions that revealed 10 fascinating facts about our views on education and how they change from region to region.

Last week we launched a new blog series to dig even deeper into the data with an inaugural post on Common Core. Building upon the initial findings in the Roadtrip, this week we take a deeper dive into the demographic dimensions of American’s view on school choice.

Our big conclusion is that there is broad bipartisan support of the general principles of school choice and a greater ideological split emerging on the particulars, such as charter schools. This split between general principles and the particulars is a similar trend to what we saw with the split between support for the general principle of uniform standards and the particulars of the Common Core State Standards. And when it comes to school choice you can’t take race, ethnicity or geography for granted in an attempt to understand the contours of this debate.

Yes it’s true that ideology matters, but it’s also true that when it comes to opening more charter schools Hispanic liberals (net support: 32 points) have a lot more in common with white conservatives (37 points) than white liberals (9 points). And liberals in the Mid-Atlantic (28 points) have a lot more in common with Midwest conservatives (31 points) than Midwest liberals (-2 points). If we don’t understand that, we won’t be able to really understand the local debates taking place across the country and why they differ so much from place to place.

Digging deeper into national data

Because the Roadtrip provides us with such a large sample (6,400 respondents), we can divide it by demographics in addition to geography to achieve new insights.

Below we explore the data in two ways: 1) the demographic dimensions of opinions on school choice, and 2) the connection between parents’ views on education and the type of school their children attend.

To explore the demographic dimensions of people’s views on school choice, we looked at two dimensions of support: support for the general goal of school choice (“Providing parents with multiple school options so they can find the learning environment that best meets the needs of their children”) and support for a particular policy (“Creating more competition in our school system by allowing more charter schools to open”). We organized the results in terms of net support—percentage supporting minus percentage not supporting—across three dimensions: 1) race and ethnicity, 2) political ideology and 3) both race and ethnicity and political ideology. This means that if the number is positive there are more supporters than opponents and if the number is negative there are more opponents than supporters.

Race and ethnicity. We were able to break the results out by five demographic groups and what we found was a general pattern of overall significant net support for both multiple school options and opening more charter schools, with larger support for the former than the latter. There were significant variations by race and ethnicity, with people of color having larger net support for school choice than whites. For example Blacks’ net support for multiple school options was 14 points higher than whites and Asians’ and Hispanics’ net support for opening more charter schools was 11 points higher than that of whites.

Political Ideology.We also looked at the connection between political ideology and support for school choice. We found that while there was only a four point gap in net support between conservatives and liberals for the principle of multiple school options, this gap increased more than five-fold to 22 points when it came to the particular policy of opening more charter schools.

Finally, we looked at the intersection of race, ethnicity and ideology on net support for opening more charter schools. Who were the most supportive? Hispanic conservatives. Who were the least supportive? White liberals. In fact, net support for opening more charter schools among Hispanic conservatives was four times that of white liberals. Even between liberals, there was a large split with net support among Hispanic liberals three times that of white liberals.

Another way to dig deeper into the Roadtrip data is by exploring the connection between parents’ views on education and the type of school their children attend. To do so, we broke out the results by four different school types: parents with children in traditional public schools, public charter schools, private schools and who are homeschooled.

Need for Change. It turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, that there is a significant difference in parents’ views on the “level of improvement that is necessary in your local public schools” depending on which schools they end up choosing for their children. Parents who homeschooled their children were almost twice as likely to say “a lot” of changes were necessary in their local public schools compared to those who sent their children to traditional public schools. It seems the greatest potential change agents are the ones most likely to opt out of the traditional system.

Trust in Teachers and Unions. No matter what school you send your kids to you are likely to trust individual teachers and not trust teachers unions when it comes to determining “what is best for improving schools.” But there are still very significant differences by school type. The net distrust of teachers unions is four times greater among charter parents and eight times greater among homeschool parents than traditional school parents.

School Calendar and Preschool. The type of school that parents send their children to is also connected to their views on policy reforms. For example, charter school parents’ net support for a providing “a longer school day and a longer school year” is more than twice that of parents who send their kids to traditional public schools and private schools. And parents who homeschool their children were the only group with negative net support for “providing all 3- and 4-year-old children with high-quality preschool.”

School Choice. Perhaps not surprisingly, net support for opening more charter schools is twice as large among charter school parents as traditional school parents. What is interesting to note is that there is also a wide gap between the views of charter school parents and their private school and homeschool counterparts for both multiple school options and opening more charter schools.

Public or Private? Finally, when it comes to the question of how to classify charter schools, charter school parents once again stand out. Two-thirds of charter school parents classify charter schools as “public” compared to about one-third of traditional and homeschooling parents. It’s also interesting to note that even one-third of charter school parents aren’t sure if a charter school is a public school or describe it as private.

The intersection of ideology and geography

We know that ideology matters when it comes to school choice but do these national patterns hold across the different regions in America?

As with Common Core, it turns out that where you live matters. In some regions there are sharp ideological divides over opening more charter schools, where as in others regions there is little or no difference between conservatives, moderates and liberals.

Voters in the Mountain States had the largest ideological divide on the issue, with a 39-point difference between liberals and conservatives on opening more charter schools.

The second largest divide is found in the Midwest, with a 33-point difference between conservatives and liberals on opening more charter schools. It’s also the only region where liberals’ net support is negative (-2). At the same time, it’s worth noting that liberals are more likely than moderates in the Midwest to support the broader concept of multiple school options.

Liberals in New England were the least supportive of Common Core of liberals in any region and on opening more charter schools they are similarly skeptical, with net support 30 points below that of conservatives. They are also the least supportive of multiple school options of any region (although it should be noted that net support of 50 is still quite strong).

Voters in the South generally have more support for school choice, and this includes moderates and liberals although there is still a significant ideological gap with conservative net support more than twice that of liberals.

The contours in the West are similar to that of the South, but with even greater support across the board for opening more charter schools.

In the Border States the gap between liberals and conservatives is half that of New England, at just 15 points.

As similar pattern is found in the National Capital region with a gap between liberals and conservatives of just 14 points.

Mid-Atlantic voters are not only tied with the National Capital region for the smallest liberal-conservative gap (14 points) but are the only region where liberals support opening charter schools more than moderates.

Demographics and Geography

Our big take away from this return visit to school choice is that you can’t really understand the debate about providing more options for parents if you don’t take demographics and geography into account.

Yes it’s true that ideology matters, but it’s also true that when it comes to opening more charter schools Hispanic liberals (net support: 32 points) have a lot more in common with white conservatives (37 points) than white liberals (9 points). And liberals in the Mid-Atlantic (28 points) have a lot more in common with Midwest conservatives (31 points) than Midwest liberals (-2 points). If we don’t understand that, we won’t be able to really understand the local debates taking place across the country and why they differ so much from place to place.

Methodological Notes

6,400 interviews among a random sample of registered voters were conducted from May 29 to June 16, 2013 by online survey. 800 interviews were conducted in each of the eight regions (Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, National Capital, South, Midwest, Mountain States, Border States, and West) and the results were weighted to ensure proportional responses. The complete survey methodology and list of each of the states in each region can be found here and the complete national survey results can be found here.

The following are the ranges of the margins of error at 95 percent confidence by crosstab for the regional results: Conservatives (±5.58 to ±6.98), moderates (±5.21 to ±5.80) and liberals (±6.07 to ±7.41).